


april showers bring

by Summerlightning



Category: Adventure Time
Genre: AU, implied established relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-25
Updated: 2012-12-25
Packaged: 2017-11-22 10:05:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/608629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Summerlightning/pseuds/Summerlightning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if, on the day Jake’s parents wanted to go for that nice mountain stroll, it was raining and they didn’t go after all?</p>
<p>Or:  Princess Bubblegum finds a baby in the woods.</p>
            </blockquote>





	april showers bring

\---

It’s sheeting rain and Princess Bonnibel Bubblegum is having a hike up through the mountain pass that skirts her kingdom’s backbone anyway, testing out the new waterproof slicker she’s been working on for the past four months (not counting the handful of weeks she spent on schematics beforehand).  Over the course of her benevolent reign she has come to the conclusion that waterproof clothing is terribly important to a population composed primarily of sugarpeople.  After every sudden spring downpour like this one, the lot of her subjects unlucky enough to be caught outside end up half-melted and droopy and _really_ , preventative measures must be taken!  Therefore:  slicker beta, take one.  
  
She doesn’t mind the wet.  She rather likes it, to be honest:  the ground is soft underfoot and the gurgle of the creek in the trees off to her left, swollen for the season’s snowmelt, mingles pleasantly with the rain’s relentless lull.  The canopy overhead makes a leandown lattice of gray-green.  The air is thin and cool — it’s peaceful here, and Bubblegum smiles.  She walks for a while with her eyes half-closed, relishing the opportunity to think about nothing in particular.  It’s not one she’s granted often.  
  
But then—  
  
She stops, frowning.  Listening.  Woven into the rain and the creek’s snicker-bubble-snicker there is another sound, a mewl of a keen blown out pathetic and piping.  Something’s crying.  Something young.  
  
Bubblegum hikes the hood of the slicker up over her headpiece and switches direction, following the noise.  She bypasses a few moss-covered logs — winds her way between boulders gone dark and slippery for the rain.  Finally she comes into a clearing and there it is, thrashing in the long-ago autumn leaves.  It’s drenched.  It’s mostly naked.  It’s a baby.  
  
What kind of baby she isn’t sure.  She crouches next to it, assessing.  It’s pink but paler than she is:  a low glance and she determines it’s a male.  His head lolls on his flabby little neck and he squints at her through the rain, snuffling.  His eyes are blue, crystalline like cupcake icing, like festivals, like laughing.  He’s wearing some kind of knitted cap with nubby horns on top.  She smiles, prods at his cheek.  It dimples under her finger.  He squalls and she says, by way of greeting, “Meat-based, oh.  Hi there, tiny guy.”  
  
He responds by issuing another wail.  His mouth is full of rainwater and he gurgles through it, choking, gagging.  Bubblegum takes him by his rubbery-wet shoulder and turns him on his side to clear his airways, noting first that he’s smeared with his own leavings all down his bare bottom and next that no one seems to be doing anything about it.    
  
“Hello!” she calls.  She looks up and blinks through the rain.  “Hello, excuse me, your offspring is in distress!”  Her voice goes rolling down the mountain, rebounding as a languid echo that eventually gives up and quits.  Under her hand, meanwhile, the frail burr of the baby crying keeps up its constant blat.  
  
Well then.  
  
Slithering out of one sleeve of her slicker, Bubblegum gropes in her pocket for a handkerchief.  She uses the one she finds to clean off the baby as best she can, then picks him up and tucks him in the crook of her arm beneath the slicker.  He’s cold.  His cap is soaked and soppy and she peels it off.  Beneath it he’s got one fine, wispy curl of yellow hair, and it leaves a damp comma across her breast as he burrows into the heat of her, sniffling.  Bubblegum sighs.  
  
What else can she do?  She takes him home.  
  
—  
  
He vomits bubbly pink froth all over himself and Bubblegum reaches for her telephone.  She’s good at multitasking:  she dials a familiar number with one hand and mops up the mess with the other.  Three rings later her call connects.  
  
“Speak.”  
  
“Rude,” Bubblegum replies.  “You can’t give me orders, Marceline.  I’m a princess.”  
  
“I’m a queen,” Marceline fires back.  “I do what I want.”  But then, “What’s up, Bonni?  Did I leave my socks over there again?  Because I’m pretty sure I’m missing the purple ones I like — you know, with the skulls—”  
  
“I found a baby in the woods and I don’t know what it is or how to take care of it,” Bubblegum says.  She gives the aforementioned baby’s chin an experimental tickle.  He gapes at her toothlessly, then hitches out a hiccup and another bubble of slime.  “Since you’ve traveled all over Ooo I thought maybe you might recognize its species and sustainability requirements.”  
  
From the phone’s receiver there is a measured pause.  “…yeah, so,” Marceline answers at length, “no socks?”  
  
“In the laundry,” says Bubblegum, “they reeked, you’re welcome,” and hangs up.  
  
—  
  
He’s sleeping when Marceline arrives.  She takes one look at the lump he makes in the middle of Bubblegum’s bedclothes and whistles through her teeth.  Bubblegum’s always wondered how she manages it, what with the fangs and all.  
  
“Human,” Marceline says.  “Wow.”  
  
Bubblegum starts.  “What?  Really?”  She peers at the baby on the bed with new undisguised interest and more than slight concern.  “You’re sure?”  
  
“No doubt.”  Drifting closer, Marceline leans down over the foundling and prods him in much the same manner the princess did hours prior.  He grunts and rolls over — his pudgy legs kick out like pistons, first one and then the next.  
  
“Haven’t humans been extinct for centuries, though?”  
  
“Yeah, pretty much.”  Marceline waves a hand.  “All the radiation and stuff wiped them out.”  She hooks a finger in the baby’s diaper — Bubblegum fashioned him one immediately after entering the palace — and pulls it down a bit, eyes squinched into ruby slits.  “Dang, Bonni, this kid isn’t even mutated at all.  Usually they have, I dunno, gills or scales or fin—”  
  
The baby stirs.  His eyes snap open:  his toes flare and he wriggles, straining to look at Marceline.  She rubs a fingertip over his nose and he quiets again, huffing out a breath that shakes his small body entire.  He nudges his mouth to the fingertip and nurses at it hopefully.  
  
“Gross,” Marceline offers, but she lets him keep it.  She glances at Bubblegum.  “Got any milk that isn’t strawberry flavored?  They like that, I think.  Warm.”  And then, “What’re you gonna do with him, Bonni?”  
  
Rain ticks against the window, _tappa-tpp_ , _tappa-tpp_.  Bubblegum shakes her head and says, “I have absolutely no lumping idea.”


End file.
